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100 things or less

Here’s an article of Sebastian Kuepers, who got rid of most of this physical belongings and down to a 100 items. Unfortunately he doesn’t list these things and also doesn’t explain the way he counts. The definition of a „thing“ is missing. In the comments he explains that one pair of socks counts as one thing – this makes perfect sense to me, but I wonder how he handles less obvious cases. Take this camera:

How many „things“ do you count? One thing called „camera and accessories“ or eight items? Neither makes much sense. Just the camera body without a battery or SD card is plain useless so these three things could easily be counted as one, but you wouldn’t need the spare battery / SD card to make the camera work.

He writes that he still owns a bike. Does this bike have a lock? With keys? A detachable battery powered light? What’s in his purse? Does he count every card on its own or just the purse as a whole? What about other keys? Business cards?

What about consumables? Does he use a razor with interchangeable blades? What’s in his fridge? I have 18 bottles of water alone in my shelf. I think it’s fair to ignore fast moving consumer goods, but what about that bottle of good wine or scotch that you keep for a while – just because, you know, you shouldn’t drink scotch the way you have soft drinks.

Maybe he doesn’t own any of those things – technically I don’t own most of the cards shown above as they’re still property of the respective bank or governmental entity, but this seems like an odd hack. You can take them with you wherever you go and they’re specifically made for you. Not counting them is different from not counting the furniture you rent with the apartment.

I don’t want to ruin his good mood (ok, I’m a bit jealous, maybe I do want to) – but since he also drops the number of 10’000 things the average German owns, I’d really like to know his way of counting and see his list of items. Just to make sure he doesn’t compare apples to oranges.